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Friday, February 10, 2012

Cleantech the Next Great Investment Opportunity

Cleantech is the next great investment opportunity. Huge amounts of investment wealth have been generated by technological innovations like the microprocessor (personal computing and mobile telecommunications) and the Internet (ecommerce and social networks). These two innovations have ushered in unprecedented investment growth in the 1980s and 1990s. According to many predictions, Cleantech is the next investment wave that may very well eclipse the first two.
The rise of microprocessors driven the herculean growth of companies like Intel (NasdaqGS: INTC), Microsoft (NasdaqGS: MSFT), Dell (NasdaqGS: DELL), and Qualcomm (NasdaqGS: QCOM). The rise of the Internet has catapulted companies like Facebook to become a 28 billion dollar business. The Internet has also driven the stock of companies like Apple (NasdaqGS: AAPL) Google (NasdaqGS: GOOG), Amazon.com (NasdaqGS: AMZN), and eBay (NasdaqGS: EBAY).

Cleantech is all about efficiency and this is a mantra for businesses looking to be more competitive in economically challenging times. The cleantech revolution is sure to grow as oil becomes more scarce and more expensive. Further, attempts to minimize the impacts of climate change will drive the price of cleantech stock.

Cisco Systems (NasdaqGS: CSCO) vice president Marie Hattar has said that cleantech will not only be the biggest innovation ever, but it will be 10 to 100 times bigger than the Internet.

Here are some forecasts for cleantech growth:

The global market for all cleantech applications, which includes energy storage and the smart grid, will double to $3.6 trillion by 2020.

Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) projects that the annual smart grid revenues will double by 2014 and then quintuple to more than $100 billion annually by 2030.

According to Cisco Systems, the communications portion of smart grid investment alone is expected to reach $20 billion annually.